The Unspoken Partnership

I’m not the best everyday friend, but when the going gets tough, I’m the guy people trust to depend on. Running an agency as part of a global network, I’m used to hearing about all the everyday problems. However, it’s all worth it because of my biggest win, Kinnect—the agency that my wife Chandni and I bootstrapped 13 years ago. While there were several hardships, what kept us going was the pain and challenges that we shared together. It helped us understand and support each other in the best way we could.

But if I had to pick the lowest point of my life, it was when Chandni fell seriously ill right after giving birth to our first child, during the height of the pandemic, and just as we were closing our acquisition by the FCB Group. The situation made me a businessman-turned A-grade medical student overnight. I started to read up on all of Chandni’s medical reports, often as thoroughly as the doctors themselves. She was and is the most important person in my life, and I was determined to do everything I could to get her out of the predicament we were in.

With our parents and the rest of the family locked out, I was responsible for almost everything – right from pumping milk and sending it home to the baby, to managing work. With the pressures of the pandemic, work became my only distraction. It was a nerve-wracking time, but we fought through it together and came back even stronger. With immense hard work and resilience, the deal eventually went through too and Kinnect became FCB Kinnect.

Now, as a proud dad of two, I find joy even in the smallest moments like changing diapers to rocking my kids to sleep. I believe that every father should take pride in doing these things. After all, it’s more for you, than the baby. I know that mother’s guilt is real, but so is father’s guilt. I too find myself asking questions like, Am I truly present for my child? Am I spending enough quality time with them and providing the guidance they need?

But what gives me the strength and assurance is the bond I share with Chandni. The synergy we bring to all our relationships is our strength, one that’s seldom spoken of. Being married for so long comes with its ups and downs. Being two highly opinionated individuals, we’ve had tonnes of disagreements – personal and professional. But we’ve lived by the golden rule of settling our battles before we go to sleep.

While we are absolutely aligned with our vision, it’s abundantly obvious that we have unique skillsets and strengths, and we’re happy to let each other take the final call when needed. I often get asked about work-life balance. But for us, it’s work-life integration. Being in the advertising industry, even work meetings become coffee conversations. Having such vibrant people around you, there are always ways to find downtime during work. To maximise our time with our children, we sometimes bring them down to the office and have also taken our son on business trips.

I love what I do, but if I weren’t in this space, my Gujarati roots would likely have me in Finance. It would be nice to have my kids start their own venture someday. Building something from the ground up encompasses a sense of independence and accomplishment that cannot be replicated. To all the young guns looking to get into advertising, remember: there are no rulebooks. What works today might not work tomorrow. Embrace trial and error, stay ambitious, but always practice patience.

I’m grateful for Kinnect and my kinnectors, who come with a positive attitude, voracious hunger to learn, and the ability to be team players rather than just individually focused.

Luck plays a huge factor in how things pan out, but it also favours the brave. A dreaming mind finds synchronicity with the universe, and this year I’m especially lucky to be a dad to a beautiful baby girl, something I’d always dreamed of. Good things take time, but really great things can sometimes happen in the blink of an eye. Keep going; you’re doing great!

Articles first published on Impact.